People's Republic of Bangladesh
Support to National Capacity Development Framework for Improving Water and Sanitation Services in Bangladesh
Output Report
1 December 2015
GWASS
SOUTH ASIA
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The World Bank Group
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Support to National Capacity Development Framework for Improving Water and Sanitation Services in Bangladesh
(P131960)
Water and Sanitation Program
October 14, 2018
The following internal report summarizesthe process, outputs and intermediate outcomes of the World Bank technical assistance to the Ministry of Local Government’s National Capacity Development Framework for Union Parishads to improvewater and sanitation services in Bangladesh. This support sought to strengthen peer-to-peer or ‘horizontal’ learning processes amongst Union Parishadsand improve horizontal accountability communications and monitoringsystems within the sector. The strategic focus has been on strengthening the long-term capacity of the Government and in particular at the lowest decentralized tier of local government responsible for ensuring safe water and sanitation services for all. Outputs from this World Bank technical assistance are collated in eleven annexures.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Context
Background
Process
Results
Outputs
Client Capacity Increased
Policy / Strategy Informed
Knowledge Deepened
Intermediate Outcomes
Client Capacity Increased
Policy / Strategy Informed
Knowledge Deepened
Outcomes
Lessons Learned
ANNEXURES
Annex 1: The partnership framework for union parishad capacity development
Annex 1: The union parishad capacity building chapter of the PAD for LGSP II
Annex 1: Core curriculum for capacity building of union parishads
Annex 2: Scale-up of the Horizontal Learning Program (Nov. 1st, 2011 – Oct. 31st, 2015)
Annex 2: Sample of 22 English / Bangla union parishad good practice fact sheets
Annex 2: Lessons learned in the Implementation of the horizontal learning program
Annex 2: Transition plan for the horizontal learning program in Bangladesh
Annex 3: The union parishad handbook on improving rural infrastructure services (English)
Annex 4: Map of hard to reach union parishads for water supply andsanitation
Annex 5: Towards an arsenic safe environment in Bangladesh (summary)
Annex 5: Union parishad fact sheets on arsenic screening and arsenic mitigation options
Annex 5: Union parishad advocacy note on pay-for-use arsenic testing, marking and switching of wells
Annex 6: Union parishad fact sheets on open budgets andraising of property holding tax
Annex 6: Union parishad advocacy note on linking of open budgets andraising of property holding tax
Annex 7: Union parishad fact sheet on union coordination committee meetings (UCCM)
Annex 7: Union parishad learning note on the role of UCCM in ensuring services for all
Annex 8: Union parishad fact sheet on 100% sanitation
Annex 8: Union parishad learning note on 100% sanitation
Annex 9: Report on the extension of OpenStreetMaps in Bangladesh
Annex 10: Flyer on the Union Parishad Help Line (UPHL) services
Annex 11: Report on the water and sanitation hackathon
Executive Summary
1.The objective of this World Bank technical assistance has been to support the Government of Bangladesh’s National Capacity Development Framework for Improving Water and Sanitation Services (WSS) in Bangladesh, focusing on demand-responsive peer-to-peer or ‘horizontal’ learning processes and improve horizontal accountability communication and monitoring systemsto track progress in the sector. This technical assistance is in line with the World Bank Country Assistance Strategy (CAS 2011-14, extended until FY15) which seeks to support the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) target of ensuring safe drinking water and sanitation for all. It has contributed to strengthening the long-term capacity of the Government, in particular the union Parishad (UP) which is responsible for ensuring water and sanitation services for all in Bangladesh.
Context
2.Bangladesh has made significant progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7 targets for both improved water supply and sanitation access of the Bangladesh population. The recent WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) 2014 shows that 85% of the population has access to improved water supply - with the vast majority through non-piped, ‘other improved’ sources – while 57% of the population has access to improved sanitation facilities.[1] Another 28% and 14% of the population has access to shared and unimproved sanitation facilities, respectively, meaning that 96% of the population has access to latrine facilities – irrespective of their quality – and only 3% of the population currently practices open defecation. This figure that has come down remarkably from 42% in 2003, in particular compared to other countries in the region. While Bangladesh remains off track to achieve the sanitation MDG as a whole, it has successfully reduced the percentage of the bottom 40% of the population without access to basic water and sanitation facilities.
3.While access has increased substantially, there are still significant challenges if Bangladesh is going to ensure safe, affordable, reliable and sustainable services for all. For sanitation, while there has been a significant movement in Bangladesh from ‘open defecation’ towards ‘fixed point defecation,’ the quality of sanitation coverage is an emerging area of concern, with over 40% of all latrines classified as ‘unimproved’ according to the JMP. For water supply, while access is widespread, drinking water is undermined by severe quality issues: for example, 20% of water supply faces arsenic contamination at source, and 12% at point of use, and service provision is often unreliable and intermittent.
4.With high levels of access to basic yet affordable water and sanitation facilities the premier challenge for Bangladesh is ensuring the quality of water and sanitation. Given the heavy reliance on non-public provision of services, driving up the quality of services is primarily a regulatory challenge. Increasing service quality without compromising the affordability to consumers is heavily dependent on the capacity of local government institutions. The rural local government system comprises of more than 4500 directly elected union parishads and 484 upazilaparishads, within 64 administered districts and 7 divisions that accommodate the rural 70% of the Bangladesh population.
5.Given the high levels of access to basic water and sanitation services but the serious quality of service challenges, the World Bank has sought though this TA to improve local government capacity to ensure improved quality of services for all. This sought to (a) increase client capacity to identify and replicate good water and sanitation practices; (b) inform policy directives based on local practices; and (c) deepen knowledge through the open sharing of information. These outcomes were supported through targeted activities directed towards the following areas:
- Strengthening local government’s ability to advocate for good practices: through local processes to identify, share and replicate good water and sanitation practices,
- Strengthening national institutions to scale up best practices: by bringing the weight of lessons learnt from the most replicated practices to influence policy directives.
- Improving Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E): by collecting and making publicly available union parishad data which allows comparison between local governments.
Background
6.In Bangladesh, the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives lead the water supply and sanitation sector. It delegates its functional responsibility to: (i) the Department of Public Health and Engineering (DPHE); (ii) the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED); (iii) the Water Supply and Sewerage Authorities (WASA); and, (iv) local authorities – Pourashavas in urban and the Union Parishads[2] in rural Bangladesh. Government has also created a platform for multi-stakeholders’ partnerships, especially with non-government organizations (NGOs) that has played a catalytic role in the water and sanitation sector and created a synergistic effect in achieving the goal of safe drinking water and open defecation free status. Service delivery thus relies heavily on the capacity and performance of decentralized institutions, most importantly the UPs, the lowest tier of local government institutions in Bangladesh.
7.The Government of Bangladesh’s National Capacity Building Framework for UPs was developed with the support of the Swiss Development Cooperation and the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) of the World Bank. It was signed in 2011 by the Local Government Training Institutions (LGTIs), such as Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development, the Rural Development Academy, the Local Government Division (LGD), the Rural Development and Cooperatives Department of the Ministry for Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives and key development partners in addition to the World Bank such as the Swiss Development Cooperation, the United Nations Development Program, the European Union, and USAID.
8.The Framework rests on two pillars of capacity development: Pillar 1) a supply-driven, core cascading training, which consists of training of 160 trainers of Local Government members; and, Pillar 2) a demand-responsive, peer or ‘horizontal’ learning process.Good Practices that are being accepted/replicated widely through ‘horizontal learning process’ of pillar-2, are included in the ‘supply-driven training’ of pillar-1.
9.WSP has since 2007 assisted LGD in designing and applying Horizontal Learning, a peer learning process for UPs to identify good practices in local governance. Originally designed as a pilot, the Horizontal Learning Program (HLP) was scaled up to 32 UPs by 2011, and became part of the National Capacity Building Framework in 2012. Through this technical assistance the World Bank has garnered the support of 32 development partners (Donors, NGOs & Projects) to include horizontal learning intothe Local Government Support Program II (LGSP-II) which provides financing to all 4,500 union parishads in Bangladesh. The horizontal learning process enables union parishads to identify their good practices, validate these good practices and prepare fact sheets on the results. These good practices shared amongst peer union parishads at network workshops enables them to select good practices they want to adopt and replicate using their own budget.
10.This internal synthesis report details the intermediate outcomes, outputs and process of the World Bank technical assistance tosupport the national capacity development framework for union parishads to improve water and sanitation services in Bangladesh (TA-P131960). This enabledthe Government to adopt newprocesses for the identification, replication and institutionalization of good local government practices in the water and sanitation sector through a peer learning process of local governments. The collation and dissemination of best practices through various open data platforms has also contributed to the strengthening of data management and horizontal accountability.Specifically, this contributed to the three followinginterrelated intermediate outcomes:
(a)Client Capacity Increased:
Institutionalization of the horizontal learning centrewithin the‘Training and Consultancy’ Department of the National Institute for Local Government (NILG) which has increased the ability of NILG to manage local government capacity building.This support was also extended to establishdistrict hubs (in Kurrigram, Satkhira, Moulvibazar, ChapaiNawabganjTangail) to share good practices and monitor openbudget allocations. This has decentralized monitoring and increasedthe open budget allocations to the replication of good union parishadpractices. As per the national Capacity Development Framework (signed bytwo Government Divisions, three Government Training Institutes and eight Development Partners) the sharing and replication of the good practices is one of the core modalities for enhancing capacity of union parishads(to complement the supply driven core training and demand driven elective training modalities).
(b)Policy / Strategy Informed:
In addition to improving services, the replicating ofgood practices by local governments using their own resourcesenables the lessons from the most replicated good practices to be collated and shared this with policy makers. Support from this TA for the collation, sharing and analysis of the most replicated good practices by union parishadshas contributed to:
- Revision of the Government’s Implementation Plan for Arsenic Mitigation (IPAM 2009) to incorporatearsenic screeningas the bottom rung of the arsenic mitigation ladder.
- The Local Government Division issuing a circular to institutionalizethe Union Development Coordination Committee (UDCC) Meetingsempowering UPs to coordinate service providers.
- The development of an infrastructure manual for union parishads based on the collation of their own good practices in implementing capital works for roads, drains, culverts and embankments.
- The utilization of collated audit data to calculateperformance grants based on own source revenue under the Second Local Governance Support Project (LGSP II).
- The issuing of the ‘Hard to Reach Area Strategy for Water Supply and Sanitation’ by the Ministry of Local Government directing government and donor investments to unionparishads with high water and sanitation poverty (i.e. poor composite water, sanitation, poverty scores).
- The Local Government Division issuing a government circular prioritizing disability inclusive investments through the adoption of non-excludable targets and non-excludable means.
- The successful replication of ‘100% sanitation’ good practices by local governments contributing to a reduction in the prevalence of open defecation to less than 1% in Bangladesh.
- The extension of policy support for pure public goods (i.e. non-rival and non-excludable targets that include 100% sanitation, 100% screening for arsenic, 100% tubewell protection).
(c)Knowledge Deepened
The strengthening of systems for horizontal accountability of local governments improves information flow about what works and what does not work in local level service provision across the country. Encouraging the sharing of knowledge with peersmakes data more accessible. This TA has contributed to establishingopen knowledge systems that include:
- The establishment of a water supply and sanitation open data platform for the collation andvisualization of secondarydata sets associated with the WASH sector in Bangladesh.
- The establishment of a geospatial data sharing platform (GEODASH)that enables the uploading/ storing / sharing / searching / downloading of GIS data sets for Bangladesh.
- The promotion and extension of capacity for the crowd sourcing of mapping information in Bangladesh for water supply and sanitation on the OpenStreetMapping platform.
- The establishment ofthe Union Parishad Help Line for the two-way dissemination and collation of information from local governments via SMS, robocall, IVRS and phone surveys.
- Support for Horizontal Learning interactive systems that include SMS blog, twitter feed to billboard, facebook group and facebook page to share union parishad good practices.
- The hosting of water and sanitation hackathonsfostering the development of IT applications that address WASH issues and promotethe sharing of data / systems knowledge.
Process
- Conventional capacity building programs usually starts with assumption that “there is a lack of capacity” that has to be addressed. ‘What’, ‘how’ and ‘when’ these deficiencies will be addressed is generally decided by central capacity providers. In contrast, the basic assumption under this TA has been that capacities already exist. ‘What’, ‘how’ and ‘when’ learning will be undertaken is to be decided by local stakeholders within a peer network. This complements conventional capacity building efforts by sharing ‘what works’ and allowing replication amongst peers to improve the environment into which capacity building is directed.
- This process recognizes that every local government can simultaneously be ‘a teacher’ as well as ‘a learner’ of good practices. By monitoring what local governments choose to replicate with their own funds, within their own context, it is possible for development partners and national decision makers to learn from their collated experience. The Horizontal Learning process consists of the following activities:
- UPs are encouraged to identify their good practices and the associated indicators.
- UPs select the good practices they wish to visit in order to learn from their peers.
- UPs prioritize, discuss with citizens and integrate appropriate good practices into their annual plan and budget.
- UPs replicate good practices with the support of their peers.
- Progress in replication is monitored through peer reviews and achievements recognized through the horizontal learning network